Bee was started in 2011 by a few of us who wanted to do work in the community, and we all love to garden. We all took a class together on community gardening, and through a series of events we were led to the EcoFarm.

We instantly fell in love with the space, for obvious reasons, and we soon found out that there was nothing going on at the EcoFarm at the time, and that volunteers were needed. A little overwhelmed, we decided to return to the space as soon as possible and see what we could do to help. The weeds were high, invasive species, really a joke, mimosa trees were taking over everything, and poke weeds, and milk weeds, and blackberry vines, and ant hills, and awful grass...

We tentatively started clearing out all of the six foot tall weeds around and in the compost, cutting grass, edging around beds, and as time wore on, the space started to become presentable again. By May, we were ready to plant some beds, and we had a couple from the neighborhood, that had plenty of time and plenty of seeds, the perfect combination. We began filling the beds that were left one by one, and then, having a little too much fun, one of our volunteers began making beds all over the place so she could keep planting! This was just the kind of thing we were hoping for!

There were 8 beds already built, originally for herbs, according to the diagram on the SEC website... and on our first visit out there was one family plot, a pretty awesome job that family has done by the way... and in the 8 beds for herbs there were strawberries in one of the small beds, and tomatos in 2 of them... this left 6 unattended (and most of the remaining 2 acres of space!) On our first visit, we met a woman from the SEC who informed us that they were keeping the area mowed and other than that, not much activity. The SEC has been kind to work with... though that mowing only happened one time (and that was when WE were allowed to borrow a mower) at least to our knowledge anyway!

Long story short... the summer wore on, there were weeds, the grass kept growing faster than we could cut it... then July came and we had weeks of 100 degree weather, accompanied by a serious drought (oh yeah, and a few rain barrels and water catchment are our only source of watering the area at this time)!!!

It has been hard and diligent work, and with the help of some local volunteers, the support of the community garden coalition, and mostly tons and tons of weeding, hoeing, watering, mowing, whacking, stomping, planting, pulling from BEE, the Community Garden at EcoFarm is up and running, and the EcoFarm is starting to take shape...